Advertising Photography: Where's the Difference?

The rising sun, the prowling tigress, the chubby baby exploring a new found object with his mouth, the moonlight shimmering on the surging waves... are some of the best moments in life that almost all photographers have captured at some point of their lives. But all this is not advertising photography. Advertising photography is different from other forms of photography by a huge margin. And the main reason for such a difference is the presence of a huge group of people, to whom every shot of advertising photography is dedicated.

This huge group of people is lovingly called the target audience by the advertisers, the creative group working on the campaigns and the commercial photographers. The target audience forms the core of advertising photography. The whole project is developed around them. It is all about them, for them and because of them. Every shot is planned such that they impress the target people – the consumers.

Advertising photography, as the name suggests, is solely meant for the purpose of promoting something. This could be a product, a service or an idea. There is a subject which is usually the model in advertising photography; and the model can be both a living thing as well as a non living thing. We find frequent usage of human models in advertising photography. And the human model, more often than not, represents the target audience.

Despite the differences in Advertising photography and other forms of photography, there are quite a few similarities among all the offshoots of photography. These similarities are there due to the need to compose and balance images for optimum visual impact. Then some of the equipments used, are also similar. Despite these similarities, there is a huge difference between advertising photography and others and this difference lies in the purpose of photography in all situations.